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Prof Sir Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Prof Sir Venkatraman  Ramakrishnan

PROFESSOR Sir Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, one of the world’s most eminent molecular biologists, reached the pinnacle of scientific achievement when he and two others shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2009. In 2015 he became the first person of Indian origin to be elected president of the Royal Soci ety, the organisation that represents the world’s most eminent scientists. He stepped down from the post after five years but was able to convince many people that it would be good idea to make some form of maths compulsory for all children till the age of 18.

Venki, as everyone calls him, told GG2 Power List: “When I was Royal Society president I wanted British education to be broader. What ever you think of Rishi Sunak’s other policies, I do agree with the prime minister’s proposal for everyone to study maths – and English – right until they leave school at 18.” Venki works at the Laboratory for Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, where he has been based since 1999 and did much of the groundbreaking research on ribosomes that won him the Nobel Prize. “Translation of genetic information into pro tein is fundamental to life,” he said. “It is car ried out by the large macromolecular machine called the ribosome.” In 2018, Venki published his first book, Gene Machine: The Race to De cipher the Secrets of the Ribosome. He has spent nearly three years writing his second, Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality, which is being brought out in the UK by Hodder Press on March 19. It will be published all over the world, with many translations. According to his publishers, Venki has transformed “our under standing of why we age and die, and why some species live longer than others. We are liv ing through a revo lution in biology.


” Examining recent scientific breakthroughs, Venki has shown “how cutting-edge efforts to extend lifespan by altering our natural biology raise profound questions. Although we might not like it, does death serve a necessary biological pur pose? And how can we increase our chances of living long, healthy and fulfilled lives?” Venki was born in Tamil Nadu in 1952, and left India at 19 for higher studies and research in the US, before coming to the LMB in Cam bridge, one of the leading research institutes in the world. His younger sister, Lalita Ram akrishnan, an authority on tuberculosis, also works at the LMB. Their father, Prof C V Ram akrishnan, and his late wife, Rajalakshmi, went from Madras to establish the department of bi ochemistry at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1955. Now aged 98, he leads a retired life in Cambridge, next door to his daughter. “We are all vegetarian,” confirmed Venki. He said his father, who became unsteady on his feet only after turning 92, “has had a longer healthy life than most. Some of it is probably genetic. And some of it is just his zest for life. He used to walk several miles a day and do his own grocery shopping. I am 71 and have a 2.5 per cent chance, from actuarial tables, of dying in the next year. By the time you get to 100, that (probability) increases to 50 per cent.” In order to lead a longer and healthier life, people are usually urged to have a sen sible diet, take exercise and get suffi cient sleep. Venki, who goes to the gym (“except when I’m busy”) and cycles six miles a day to and from work, interjected: “What the book points out is the bio logical basis of this advice.

” Since stepping down as Royal Society president in December 2020, Venki has been “spending time leading my research group (at the LMB) which works on ribosomes and how ribosomes are controlled, especially the process of starting protein synthesis. This is the key to a lot of things, including viruses which will hijack that step of initiation and the cells’ ribosomes to make viral genes, including the coronavirus, by the way. “I’m going to retire next year (from the LMB). We’re trying to get the things we’re do ing wrapped up so that people can get some results and move on.” Venki is also moving on in quite an unex pected way.

“I’ve started a company,” he revealed. “People usually start a company in their 30s or 40s but I am 71.” He noted he had always “done new things throughout my life. I started as a physicist, then I went to biology, then I learned crystallogra phy”. The other co-founders of the company called Rnavate – “it’s a play on RNA and in novate” – are Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, professor of medicinal chemistry at Cambridge; the “very talent ed entrepreneur” James Harrison, “who founded and built Cycle Pharmaceuticals, with whom we hope to partner because they specialise in rare metabolic diseases”; and Lord Ajay Kakkar, “who is very interested in blood disorders like Thrombophilia and Haemophilia, which are potential areas for this company”. Venki continued: “We’re hoping to get off to a very focused start. We have huge competition from much bigger, much better financed companies, which have almost 100 times as much investment. But I think it’s a big area, and there’s probably room for lots of people to do things. My expertise is on how mRNA is trans lated, which, of course, involves the ribosome.” Venki spoke of the breakthroughs that might be possible: “Shankar Balasubramanian is very famous for his work on developing rapid meth ods to sequence DNA, which he and his col league, David Klenerman, developed. It is actu ally the way that most DNA is sequenced today. It really transformed biology. Anyway, he and I and number of others decided to start a company for RNA therapeutics. “The first person to give us some seed money was (Cipla chairman) Yusuf Hamied, but we have a few private investors as well. We actually started in December. “We’re going to have only a few employees. The idea is to try to see if we can provide treatments for rare genetic diseases. That’d be a starting point, but later on, there could be lots of implications. For example, this is based on a much more stable version of mRNA. So you could, in principle end up with better vaccines, certainly vaccines that may not require ultra cold storage, making distribution in poorer countries easier. “Down the road, it could be used for many things, including cancer therapy. We’re hoping to have made some progress in a year or so that’ll allow us to grow and do more things.” Venki is being characteristically understated.

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